Hexagram 39:
Obstruction
Obstruction. The southwest furthers.
(See Zenna Henderson.)
The northeast does not further.
(See Daniel Dennett.)
Friday, April 19, 2024
Daniel Dennett Dies
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Thursday, September 24, 2020
Monday, March 19, 2007
Monday March 19, 2007
The Naked Brain
The cover (pdf) of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society for April 2007 (Mathematics Awareness Month) features a naked disembodied brain (Log24, March 16), courtesy of researchers at the Catholic University of Louvain.
Related material:
|
Log24, Jan. 26
"… at last she realized
what the Thing on the dais was.
IT was a brain.
A disembodied brain…."
"There could not be an objective test
that distinguished a clever robot
from a really conscious person."
— Daniel Dennett in TIME magazine,
Daniel Dennett, Professor of Philosophy |
Related recommended
reading and viewing:
reading and viewing:
Tom Wolfe's essay
"Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died,"
and a video of an interview
with Wolfe.
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Friday, January 26, 2007
Friday January 26, 2007
IT
"… at last she realized
what the Thing on the dais was.
IT was a brain.
A disembodied brain…."
"There could not be an objective test
that distinguished a clever robot
from a really conscious person."
— Daniel Dennett in TIME magazine,
issue dated Mon., Jan. 29, 2007
Daniel Dennett, Professor of Philosophy
and Director of the
Center for Cognitive Studies
at Tufts University,
in his office on campus.
(Boston Globe, Jan. 29, 2006.
Photo © Rick Friedman.)
Hexagram 39:
Obstruction
The Judgment
Obstruction. The southwest furthers.
(See Zenna Henderson.)
The northeast does not further.
(See Daniel Dennett.)
It furthers one to see the great man.
(See Alan Turing.)
Perseverance brings good fortune.
"If telepathy is admitted
it will be necessary
to tighten our test up."
Amen.
Monday, April 19, 2004
Monday April 19, 2004
Cartesian Theatre
From aldaily.com today:
"If my mind is a tiny theatre I watch in my brain, then there is a tinier mind and theatre inside that mind to see it, and so on forever… more»"
This leads to the dream (or nightmare) of the Cartesian theatre, as pictured by Daniel Dennett.
From websurfing yesterday and today…
The tiny theatre of Ivor Grattan-Guinness:
The contempt for history of the Harvard mathematics department (see previous entry) suggests a phrase….
A search on "Harvard sneer" yields, as the first page found, a memorial to an expert practitioner of the Harvard sneer… Robert Harris Chapman, Professor of English Literature, playwright, theatrical consultant, and founding Director of the Loeb Drama Center from 1960 to 1980.
Continuing the Grattan-Guinness rainbow theme in a tinier theatre, we may picture Chapman's reaction to the current Irish Repertory Theatre production of Finian's Rainbow. Let us hope it is not a Harvard sneer.
In a yet tinier theatre, we may envision a mathematical version of Finian's Rainbow, with Og the leprechaun played by Andrew P. Ogg. Ogg would, of course, perform a musical version of his remarks on the Jugendtraum:
"Follow the fellow who follows a dream."
Melissa Errico
in Finian's Rainbow
"Give her a song like…. 'Look to the Rainbow,' and her gleaming soprano effortlessly flies it into the stratosphere where such numbers belong. This is the voice of enchantment…."
— Ben Brantley, today's NY Times
For related philosophical remarks on rainbows, infinite regress, and redheads, see
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